As a kid I remember the expectation that growing up would eventually put me in the world of adults — where childish thinking among my contemporaries would be a thing of the past. It didn’t take me long after turning 18 to realize how wrong that assumption was. Today it’s worse, as more people than ever need to be told to act (and think in line with) their age rather than their shoe size.

Our society is incredibly sophisticated when it comes to technology, and equally as immature in its thinking about sex. In part, maturity can be defined by simple decorum: no one wants to know about how and with whom you engage in sex. Keep your private life private.

Let us start with the basics: there are things in the life of a human being that are immutable — and thus they are legitimate for identity purposes. One is the fact that there are males, females, and a tiny fraction of those with a chromosomal abnormalities. Another category of immutability is that of race — you have about as much chance of changing your race as you do your biological sex.

Unlike some of my fellow cultural conservatives, I am not in a panic over the currently high levels of mass confusion when it comes to all that surrounds “homosexual rights.” Widespread ignorance is merely another problem to be solved. Look what has happened on the abortion issue over the years as the light bulbs were turned on inside the heads of now-former pro-aborts as they experienced this revelation: “You mean that’s a baby they’re aborting? I thought it was a clump of tissue!” More Americans are becoming pro-life.

If conservatives stop granting the ill-advised legitimacy of sexual identity we can be on our way to the place where more adults wake up: “You mean it’s just how they want to have sex? I thought it was who they are!”

The importance of us getting there will get clearer no matter what a few silly U.S. Supreme Court justices do about same-sex pseudo-marriage. If same-sex “marriage” is Dred Scott/Roe v. Wade-like blessed by SCOTUS, there are no viable arguments against making marriage the union of however many people of whatever relation or age. Attempts will be made, of course, but they will be arguing morality, which of course will no longer be applicable to how people want to achieve an orgasm and with whom.

This notion of “sexual identity rights” should be laughed at. Few people realize that according to at least one researcher, there are about 540 ways for a person to become sexually aroused. Again, to grant legitimacy to the use of a sexual predilection as an identity is to say that sexual behavior is now immune from moral judgment. After all, if a person is what they do, to criticize what they do is to criticize who they are.

To those who argue that it is not compassionate to delegitimize how a segment of society sees itself, I must respectfully disagree. Bringing people to the truth isn’t made easier by granting false premises. It’s a nice goal to avoid hurting feelings when possible, but liberty is on the line and pain is a part of life.

Cultural changes don’t stop with same-sex marriage. If you think this transgendered stuff is nutty (boys being given the right to share the girl’s washroom, for example), check out some of the paraphilias written about in this series. The list of questions that arises is increasing — as you can see here.

Asking whether the Republican candidates for president would attend a same-sex pseudo wedding might seem clever but it isn’t. The real question is the legitimacy of “sexual identity” itself — and it must become a political litmus test in 2016. Since the immature people who dominate our culture have raised their sex life to the status of a religion, why shouldn’t we demand to know where all Republican candidates stand on the imposition of that pagan religion on the rest of us?

Republican primary voters are looking to nominate a true conservative candidate because they understand that the solutions to the country’s problems are the ones conservatives offer. It is not conservative to ignore the building blocks of society as referenced from the beginning of our nation’s birth certificate — the Declaration of Independence: There is a higher law — our rights come from God — and all issues are connected as a result.

The fundamentals are thus non-negotiable, which is why enlightened leadership is arising and saying that a dreadfully wrong Supreme Court decision on marriage will not be recognized as law. GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina disagrees. Fiorina said she would not work to overturn a wrong-headed decision regarding marriage even though she disagrees with it. This is peculiar, since she boasts of being adamantly pro-life, and thus presumably willing to work against Roe v. Wade.

Fiorina can be impressive, and as a former CEO of a Fortune 50 company she presumably understands big business. It is clear, however, that she hasn’t done her homework on everything. Now she needs to learn about the nature of marriage, the nature of so-called “homosexual rights,” as well as what our “first freedom,” religious liberty entails.

Here is some good news for Fiorina and all candidates as well as their staffs: there is a free online university they can enroll in anytime. It’s called Dispatches University, and there are hundreds of articles Fiorina and company need to study ASAP. What they will learn is that you can’t be pro- “civil unions” and pro- religious liberty. They will learn about the existence of cultural Marxism, and the real genesis of the “homosexual rights” movement. They will learn about why the Founding Fathers created three branches of the federal government (here’s a preview: the U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, not the highest governing body).

Another important lesson to be learned by Carly Fiorina and her team at Dispatches University is that you can’t have one kind of culture and another kind of economy. It’s all connected — you will never see a healthy economy in a culture that endorses wholesale depravity.

When a candidate’s confusion involves the elementary matters of constitutional liberty, they cannot be trusted with leadership — especially not the White House. There are types of errors that can have catastrophic consequences. To err on any number of policy close calls is to be human. Being unable to rightly judge separation of powers is fundamental, as is the fact that moral judgment calls for proper discrimination when it comes to human sexual behavior.

There is no faster way to lay the groundwork for a return to common sense than to reset the proper context and make sure the terminology being used makes sense. For example, stop referring to men who like to have sex with men as “gay.” Instead, refer to them as men who like to have sex with men. Of course this will not be an easy shift to make, but neither will it be easy to keep American safe from foreign attacks, or to pay down tens of trillions of dollars in government debt at the federal, state, and local levels. All are difficult, and all are necessary.

The only way more of our fellow citizens will mature in their thinking is if conservatives — especially our political standard bearers — stop granting the false premise that what a person wants to do with their sex organs defines who they are. Grow up people!